ANACONDAS – ‘Sub Contra Blues’

ANACONDAS – ‘Sub Contra Blues’
If you’re one of those people who cower in the corner, whimpering at the discordant cruelty of an ISIS or Pelican soundwave, Anacondas will have you tearing your hair out. The full-frontal aggression of former Brighton crew Johnny Truant, from which they’ve spawned has returned in some form, along with earth-shakingly unclean drum and vocal sounds that could curdle milk. It’s a given that Anacondas will ride like a flea on the back of the aforementioned beast, but at least they’re doing it well. There’s absolutely nothing naive or contrived about the irate sludge on offer here and although the same old down tuned and stormy riffs can become a little predictable, by the time we hit penultimate cut ‘The Witches’, it’s clear it’s possible to shift the bosom of the sludge and grunge scene into something this lot like to call ‘Slunge’. We like the term, it’s perfectly descriptive of what was never going to be a fluffy saga about falling in love! On the contrary, it’s a full blooded hate campaign against everyone and everything, including their own instruments. Guitars that pull off loathsome screeches and bawling that verges on clinically disturbed. Oddly enough though, these nefarious Brits do sedate themselves occassionally – ‘High Horse’ crawls up the sewer long enough to scrape an effective melody together; prizing a tune from the depths with colourful guitar accents. Otherwise, the straight jackets are unbuckled….’Cold Blooded, Warm Hearted’ and closer ‘This Night Will Last Forever’ bastardise the angriest moments of Torche and early Cave In, while the opening bars of the title track fuzz-out into white noise before beating out a tribal tattoo. A word to the wise….it may be that you need to have taken the right drugs to truly appreciate something as strictly un-mellow as this. You have been warned…(7)STEVE FLETCHER